Five Questions Raised by the Doctor Who Finale

In a nutshell, the finale was highly unsatisfactory. But I don't want to drown in negativity, as there seems to be plenty of that going on around the internet. Instead, I bring you 5 questions, along with theoretical answers. And like Jeopardy, many of the answers will come in the form of more questions.

1. Who is Madame Kovarian?

She came, she giggled maniacally, and she died, and yet we know nothing of her but her name. They made far too big a deal about her to just kill her off without a second word. We didn't even get the obligatory "when the Silents rule the Universe, I will be their sheriff!" scene.

2. Now that I mention it, what do the Silents actually want?

They seem to roam the Universe menacing people without any actual purpose in doing so. Do they really want to kill the Doctor just so he won't say "Doctor Who?"

3. Can asking "Doctor Who?" really be the question?

Methinks Dorium is pulling a fast one. As you may recall, the question has been asked MANY times, especially in Moffat episodes. One might say the question was both asked and answered by Reinette in The Girl in the Fireplace, we just weren't privy to the answer. Also, it's a really stupid question. There's no answer to be given that doesn't completely pull the rug out from under 50 years of continuity and character building. Making some grand statement would be incredibly cheap.

Steven Moffat needs to ask himself the same question that the Doctor asks himself when faced with the opportunity to prevent the Daleks from existing: "Do I have the right?"

4. If the Doctor's death is really a fixed point, how could he not die?

The answer is simple: it's not really a fixed point. To put it another way, the rumors of his death are greatly exaggerated, and always have been.

The only way this resolution isn't mind-numbingly pointless is if someone has been playing an extremely long game, convincing the entire Universe that the Doctor's death is a fixed point in time. Maybe it's the Doctor who's playing the long game.

Of course, as this is a time travel show, the only way that faking his own death could work is if he actually does manage to disappear forevermore. Perhaps he just travels around in various Tesselecta bodies henceforth. Well, that's one way of getting around the regeneration limit.

Also, according to the internal mechanics of this episode, the sudden "flattening" of time can't actually have anything to do with the Doctor's death, especially if he just has to fake his own death for time to be set right. That almost definitely proves there's another party involved who actually caused the flattening of time.

It could even be something as simple as River's astronaut uniform setting off the flattening of time if River fails to kill the Doctor, so he just needs to fake out the suit.

5. Who are the Ponds?

Post-episode, my fellow watchers were extremely confused by the timeline of the Ponds.

But to quickly recap: these characters either die, have their memories erased, have their realities reset, forget every lesson they've learned in previous adventures, and generally do not behave consistently like human beings.

So let's apply Occam's razor. Maybe they aren't human beings.

I offer an alternate theory: perhaps they've been assigned by some interested third party to keep an eye on the Doctor and follow his many manipulations of time. After all, only Amy and Rory (though now it seems like only Amy) remember the various erased and reset realities apart from the Doctor (and maybe River?). Perhaps the Timelords are returning and have ordered the Ponds to keep track of the Doctor's crimes against time. Or maybe they've been assigned as guardians to keep him safe (which seems more probable, and explains how they could magically create a military base in the middle of a pyramid).

If such a thing were true or possible, I'd further propose that the Ponds are Eternals, a race introduced in Enlightenment and mentioned to be hiding out in the void in Doomsday. The race are a bit like the Q Continuum, in that they've long ago lost touch with their humanity and engage in "petty amusements" to distract them from the eternal nothingness of their lives.

So perhaps these two are like intergalactic immortal Emma Peel and John Steed, charming their way through the Universe and resetting their relationship to new fantasies of romance whenever possible. It's just their way of keeping things fresh, switching around who's the needy one, switching out who's got the upper hand in any given episode.

Maybe the Doctor has even cottoned on to who they are, and it's the Ponds he needs to convince of his death, so he can escape their watchful eyes.

River, of course, would be an accidental by-product of the "today we're going to pretend we're parents!" roleplay. Which would explain why they aren't overwhelmed with parental concern.

56
Responses to “
Five Questions Raised by the Doctor Who Finale
”

When I first heard your theory of Amy being an alien on Twitter, it sounded a bit out to lunch, but you've explained it quite well. I would actually love for this theory to play out, because it would be an awesome case of Doctor Who pulling a fast one on us viewers once again. I'm curious - if I pressed you, what sort of ranking would you give the episode?

Great post. There's a lot of great comments that are similar to my post about the finale (http://www.mahtwocents.com/?p=8115) but touch upon other areas.I thought that using the Tesselecta as a way around the Doctor's death would be too easy a way out, and darned if Moffat took it. I hope my not liking this season (or series, as they call them in the UK) isn't because of any shortcomings on my part, and this is coming from someone who's watched The Prisoner, Twin Peaks, and Lost.

While I wasn't bored for even a second, there was just way too much going on. There was no coherent narrative to speak of, and I suspect that would irritate me more with each passing episode. While individual scenes were dramatically terrific, there wasn't adequate context for the super-emotion of River or the general gravity of the situation.so i'm giving it a 3/5.

In context of NuWho finales, it's definitely one of the better ones I'd say. I'd rank it #2 after Parting of the Ways.

Just a comment on Point 4. The fixed point was River shooting (and seemingly killing) the Doctor (or something that looked like the Doctor). Just because the rest of the Universe thought he had died, doesn't mean that is what everyone there thought they saw.

It was never the Doctor, it was always the Tesselecta. The flattening of Time was caused by River not doing what she was meant to do and not by it not being the Doctor.At least, that is the way I saw it happening :-)

Great questions! I'm a little more upbeat than you on the finale - I thought as an episode it worked well enough, but in the context of the season it just reminded more of what was wrong with this year instead of what was done right. Some thoughts to your thoughts:

1. I think Madame Kovarian being revealed as a pawn/lackey of the Silence was supposed to answer the question of who she is, but I agree that it's totally unsatisfactory. She's a baby-stealing baddie all season and then a whimpering mess here. Blah.

2. We needed to learn something about them other than them being cool looking and creepy. Tying in with Kovarian, I think what we really needed to see was the Wizard, or at least the next face behind the curtain that's pulling these strings.

3. I had a different take on this. I didn't see it as Moffat setting up a question he was going to answer as much as it was Moffat reaffirming that there are some questions that shouldn't be answered. I hope I'm right and you're wrong on this one. :)

4. I think the "fixed point" is actually River shooting "the Doctor" and not killing the Doctor. Everyone just thought the fixed point was the Doctor's death because the Doctor goes into the shadows after this - he's still out there, people just think he's dead.

5. I hadn't heard this but I like your theory and explanation.

I've greatly enjoyed reading your thoughts these past few weeks! Over at the Anxiety, I'll be digging into the "Dr. Who and the Daleks" movie later this week, and then getting back to my rewatch of the Pertwee era. Your thoughts are always welcome, and you're always free to use my comments to link to your related posts. Have a great "off-season!" My thoughts on The Wedding of River Song are right here:

I've loved your writing on Doctor Who as well, and will definitely be sticking around for the pieces on Classic Who :). Maybe we can do a couple of conversational pieces about old classics in the off-season :)

Below is an attempt to answer some of these questions. It's long and ranty, so unless you have patience, don't read. Also, since I'm quickly typing this, there are grammatical and spelling errors along with not-so-detailed explanations. Question one has a point. Question two I believe assumes that The Silence is that race of aliens, even though they are instead the entire movement that was created specifically to kill the doctor so that he doesn't answer the question. The third answer is that while Doctor Who? has been asked many times before, it's when the doctor answers it that everything goes to hell. The real problem comes at the time and place that the question is answered, and not so much the question itself. Answer four is that the Doctor's death that is a fixed point in time isn't the Doctor's death, just the moment when he starts laying low and the time-point that everyone believes he dies. Also, the flattening in time wasn't caused by the Doctor not dying so much as River Song simply not shooting the Doctor. Now, as for question five: First off, it's believed that time-travelers have an expanded perspective of the universe and time, and because of this they are capable of seeing things that normal people can't. Also, it's been stated that Amy's long exposure to the rift in time has given her the ability to remember things that others can't, including events and things from the previous universe before it was destroyed. As for the pyramid base that you bring up, it was mentioned in the episode that River Song was able to get it created by pulling some strings with the U.S. government and Cleopatra.

I agree about the fixed point in time. A fixed point in time is where whatever happened there is fixed. So all through the episode we thought that what had happened and then didn't (therefore causing the formation of the holy pterodactyl empire) was River Song shooting the doctor to death, when actually what she changed but shouldn't have was river song shooting the doctor-tesselecta. She still changed a fixed point in time by not shooting!

Excellent post. I was pretty happy with the finale, although it wasn't without its faults.

I do wonder about the Silence's motivations, and whether the Doctor faking his own death will really fool them. I suspect they will be back, and also that Kovarian isn't actually dead at all.As for the Question, it clearly isn't just "Doctor Who?" and Dorium (i.e. Moffat) is being somewhat duplicitous here. Is it a question about the Doctor's true identity, or perhaps his role in the universe? Clearly all is not quite as it seems.

Certainly I'll be glad if the reboot is what it seems. Less Time Lord Victorious, more the random meddling traveller should result in more character-driven stories rather than arc-heavy ones about universal conspiracies against the Doctor.

I've cobbled together my thoughts on the season as a whole here:http://slouchingtowardsthatcham.com/2011/10/02/doctor-who-season-6-review/

I liked the episode, I think it shared with the previous episode the characteristic that all the problems with it are actually inflicted upon it by annoying things that occurred elsewhere in the season.

If the ponds had not been unceremoniously dumped in a random time with a sports car and then shown up with the whole Petrichor thing in eps 11 + 12, their timeline would probably still be puzzling, but it wouldn't be so restricted, and they wouldn't be so oddly disappointing if we hadn't watched Amy be so mysteriously not herself recently.

Also, if I had watched this episode without watching the rest of the half season, I would assume that I had missed an episode where the Ponds discussed with each other/River their issues, and I really think the way their relationship is shown in that episode almost demands that that did happen, offscreen. We're just annoyed because we reckon we deserve to see it.

I disliked the ridiculous hyperbole and one-upmanship of the size of threat in many of the previous Doctor Who finales, that is just a personal thing, but it means that I have really enjoyed the tighter, less scary-enemy-focussed last two finales. I really think I needed that rest from trying to big up the next bad creature/person to be badder than the one before.

So,yeah summary: Somehow, almost every episode of the second half of the series DETRACTED from my enjoyment of the finale rather than built it up, by throwing in niggling things that it was hard to ignore later on. But I think the finale was an excellent and entertaining solving of the problem Steven Moffatt set himsef in episodes 1,2 7+8.

#4 - The moment of the robot Doctor's death CAN still be a fixed moment in time if that's the way it always happened.

You're assuming that the real Doctor ever actually died. But if the Doctor figured out the plan to kill him before he was ever killed, and it was always the robot that River killed, then nothing was changed. It remains a fixed point.

Everyone thought the fixed point was the Doctor's death, because he let them believe that. But maybe it was always the robot Doctor. Which means that when Canton Everette III said that it was definitely the Doctor, technically it was true, since the Doctor was there inside the robot Doctor.

When River didn't kill the robot Doctor, it messed up the fixed point and everything flattened out.

Sounds great! There's so many interesting, and well thought-out opinions on WHO floating around just in the links offered in the comment section over your last few posts that it'd be a shame to lose touch with everyone until next fall.

The reason why Amy always remembers is because of the crack in time/space she had in her room while growing up... the military base inside the pyramid isn't "magically" there either, River explains that she used the hallucinogenic lipstick on JFK (hence Area 51 and the US flag on the outside of the pyramid)

Alien Amy? Then where did her daughter get her human DNA? Not buying it. They've expanded the possibilities so all kinds of weird stuff can happen to the Companions: Rory was real, then he was plastic, then he didn't exist, then he was real again. Amy's gone out of existence at least once, and remember what happened to Rose.

Your Alien Ponds theory is an interesting idea, but surely it would have been noticed if something were amiss when Amy was locked in the futuristic hospital under the watch of Mme Kovarian? As for questions 2 and 3, I think it will be a case of Moffat copping out of both.

In case that last comment didn't make it fairly clear, I was less than enamoured by the finale: too much going on, too many loose ends left unanswered, too many cheap answers to the stuff that was dealt with. Hopefully Moffat, whose work has deservedly been acclaimed in the past, will exert a little more self-control next season.

I have been so impressed with the commenters, honestly. It's fascinating how different people observe different things in the episodes, and it's definitely improved my viewing experience :) Are you on twitter by any chance?

You're right, my theory doesn't quite hold together, but nor does the canonical lack of explanation. There really was way too much going on though. The architecture of the "smashed time" reality doesn't really make any sense whatsoever, and rather than a series of vignettes, I would have liked to see the Doctor set his plan in motion. I would like a return to two-parters next season, I won't lie.

I apologize for my previous comment, it got all messed up. Another thought I had in mind is... who else other than the Doctor doesn't want the question 'Doctor Who?' answered? Probably nobody, only him, that could mean it's a future incarnation of the Doctor who prevents himself from answering the question and thus, interacting with himself in the past creates the original explosion in 'The Big Bang', note that River mentions that if the Doctor interacts with his own past it would rip a hole in the universe in 'The Impossible Astronaut'.

Really good points! I actually told Michael and Jackie that I would have enjoyed this episode a lot more had it come immediately after Good Man Goes to War. Yes, there would still be plot holes, but at least there wouldn't be so many character holes.

I have no problem with finales being "who is the doctor" type episodes, but you can express that just as clearly without it being about the fate of the entire universe and time itself (see Human Nature, or any of the classic finales).

My thing with Question 3 is that what could we possibly find out about the Doctor? Is he suddenly not a Timelord anymore? Is he Steve Urkel? Is he Vishnu? This is my problem, there's no way of answering this question, it seems to me, without undercutting everything we've ever learned about him.

The suit is not a TARDIS, in 'The Impossible Astronaut' when they go to Florida they find the empty astronaut suit on a table, the suit has lots of tubes plugged into it that are coming from the tunnels underneath, when River and Rory explore the tunnels they find the other TARDIS down there.

I guess I'll have to watch Colin Baker's episodes, I haven't seen all the episodes from the classic series yet :)

She dies... but she can probably come back. It won't probably happen anytime soon, she might stay as some sort of recurrent personage in the series like the Master, but obviously in a different way...

Physical contact between River and the Doctor, who are two of a kind, is what restarts time. I thought it was an enormous problem that River is not in physical contact with the Doctor, but only with the robot?

I'd just like to say I'm really glad that there are other people still confused by there not being an explanation for WHY the TARDIS blew up!

I thought for ages that it was the Silence's big plan, which seemed really silly from a suspense point of view since we already saw it thwarted! But I really hope there is an explanation, it's never once been mentioned again.

I keep seeing what I believe is a big misconception about the Doctor's "death" at Lake Silencio all over the interwebs, and it's bugging the hoot out of me that nobody is getting what seems so obvious. The boards are saying that somehow the Doctor fooled Time or something into thinking he died like he was supposed to (ridiculous notion, and would be stupid and lame of the Moff), but hello! The Doctor didn't change, cheat, or "fool" Time, because he never died in the first place. It happened the way it always had happened/would happen. When Amy and Co. watched the scene and burned the body in "The Impossible Astronaut," it was the Teselecta, just like it was in the final episode. Older!Eleven didn't fool Time, he fooled his previous /self/ and everyone else. It was only later that his previous self realized this (just in time, lol) and borrowed the Teselecta so he could do it again. Easy peasy, no?

That, by the way, is the answer to #4: it wasn't the Doctor's death that was the fixed point in time, it was the destruction of the Teselecta by River in the suit - that whole scene - which River interrupted (causing Time to flatten or whatever) because she didn't understand what was really going to happen. Everyone /thought/ it was the Doctor's death (including Younger!Eleven) that was the fixed point, but it was just Older!Doctor /faking/ his own death, which he succeeding in doing.

It's so hard to talk about things when everything is out of order according to each person's perspective or whatever... timey wimey, argh. ;)

It's not a TARDIS, stupid, it's just a spaceship. It's console is fundementally different from any of the Doctor's TARDIS consoles, and in Impossible Astronaut it was just in a room, ie, it was the console from the spaceship in The Lodger. Also, THE DALEKS REIGN SUPREME!

Rory was plastic, but then the Doctor rebooted the universe, and he's human again- that's where River got her human DNA if Amy's an alien or a timelord or a tesselecta or an Eternal or Doctor knows what else. Also, THE DALEKS REIGN SUPREME!

I think all in all, the inconsistencies and poor execution of series 6 are because of Moffat trying WAY to hard to impress viewers but instead biting off more than he could chew and injecting the show with a big serving of self-indulgence.